You have heard of mock trials, so why not mock weddings?
Today, many people are holding mock wedding ceremonies as a way to celebrate an anniversary or even hail a bachelor or bachelorette party. And as you can expect, this ceremony – all the way down to the mock wedding vows, is definitely not about the eternal love and binding trust that marriages are supposed to be built from. Yet, the old saying that there is a little bit of truth in every joke, holds true for mock weddings as well.
Let’s be frank. Not everyone is cut out for standing in front of God and people and professing their love to someone without feeling highly embarrassed. And making out with your new wife, in front of Grandma Mary and her father – well…not the most romantic or comfortable of things for anyone involved. For lots of people, the traditional marriage vows, from the ‘to have and to hold’ all the way ‘to the death do us part,’ feel strange, unnatural and completely opposite of what your relationship is really about. On one of the most important days of your life – shouldn’t your wedding vows have as much personality as you do? And certainly, shouldn’t they be representative of your relationship?
There also is nothing wrong with spicing things up on your wedding day by adding a few mock wedding vows of your own. Be warned however – this is definitely that you should discuss with your husband or wife to be AHEAD of time. You don’t want to find out on your wedding day that your spouse and you have senses of humor that mix about as well as oil and water. So if you are going to add some zing and zest by creating mock wedding vows of your own – and you plan for them to be fun, funny, and perhaps a bit racy…talk it over first. This doesn’t mean that you have to share your handwritten, off the cuff wedding vows, just that you tell them what your plans are.
Oh yeah! If you are planning to get married in a church – you will need to share your mock wedding vows with the preacher as well. He should definitely be ‘in on the craziness’ of the moment. And remember, that it is his job to ask the final question, which will once and for all make you husband and wife. So even with your laughable, zany or wildly creative wedding vows leave just enough room for the seriousness of the event. If you are the kind of couple that is planning a mock wedding or using mock wedding vows – chances are your friends and family will be used to it. Approaching a wedding from this angle is definitely NOT for everyone…but it can be a lot of fun, if approached with good taste.
So what would your mock wedding vows be? How about some of these?
From wife to husband –
I Sara, take you John to be my lawfully wedded joint tax return filing husband, to have and to hold more on this day than any other from here on out. Through impotence cured by Viagra, during the better more than the worse and as long as you are wealthy enough for me to get my roots done once a month. Through sickness, I will leave you alone, because you act like a big baby and have no idea what its like to suffer through period cramps every month. You will be mine to cherish until you screw up by getting caught looking through girly magazines, at which point I will nag and complain making your life a living hell from that day forward, till death do us part.
From husband to Wife
I, John, take you Sara to be my lawfully wedded dependant wife so you will quit asking me when we are going to get married. You will be mine to have and to hold until the day we have children at which point I will join the troops of other sexless and completely broke men. I promise to ignore you during PMS by taking long fishing trips with my friends and getting drunk. On better days, I will put the toilet seat down, but will purposely leave it up just to piss you off. I will cherish you as long as I am not in front of my friends and honestly hope that you never let yourself go.
If something along these lines doesn’t work for you and your wedding crowd, chances are you will have to revert back to the mushy, love laden and sickeningly sweet traditional wedding vows being regurgitated daily in courthouses and churches worldwide. And that’s okay! Marriage in and of itself is something of a tradition, and following tradition isn’t all bad! However, you might want to interject some language that is perhaps special and meaningful to the two of you.
Mock wedding vows, despite the name ‘mock’ don’t necessarily have to poke fun at the institution of marriage or relationships as a whole. But they can speak personally about you and your spouse to be’s relationship. If you are writing your own vows, be creative. Speak from your heart and strive to say words that your spouse will forever remember.
